There is one BIG reason for falling prices in Vancouver RE: the speculative mania is over.
That is all you need to know to explain the price action that will play out over the next few years.
On the way up we had people attributing price strength to all sorts of bizarre and invalid causes: the Olympics, running out of land, etc. On the way down we expect similarly bizarre arguments for price drops; commentators will offer many erroneous theories as to why prices are falling. We’re already beginning to see them, and the crash has barely commenced.
We’ll collect them; please submit new examples you come across. – vreaa

#1 – Climate Change Caused The Crash
“Prices will continue to fall, as outside buyers from other Provinces such as Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba finally realize that climate change has now become an important issue in British Columbia. What was once an enviable temperature and small secret now has become a drag, as the winter, spring and summer months are now cooler and wetter than before.”
– thinkandact commenting at the Globe and Mail, 2 Aug 2012

#2 – Cryptozoologists hot on the trail of BigFoot but frozen out of NSERC funding following the formation of Stephen Harper’s majority – ‘IntelligentDesign’ – Conservative government have stopped purchasing rural BC properties and have been compelled, en masse, to list their DunbarSouthlands manses to fund their research?

…”“The loss of these programs is nothing short of a disaster for science in Canada,” chemist David Bryce at the University of Ottawa says in a letter decrying the cuts. The letter, which has been signed by 47 senior scientists across the country, has been sent to council officials and Industry Minister Christian Paradis.”…

#3 – HolyMortification, BatMan! It’s a CulturalRenaissance! [NoteToEd: SpellCheck please, could be: RennieSeance] Eschewing their formerly shallow and acquisitive lifestyles, Vancouver’s wealthiest families have selflessly chosen to liquidate their real estate holdings in aid of charitable good works deemed vital to the ‘cultural fabric’…. [albeit, inadvertantly collapsing the UltraPrime RE market and starting a new bubble in ART]…

“Sometimes it takes a long time to understand philanthropy.” – Bob Rennie

[G&M] – Lululemon billionaire ready to chip in for Vancouver

“I was a substitute teacher and a struggling business owner and I needed a bigger paycheque,” said Mrs. Wilson… The Wilsons credit the Kits lifestyle with inspiring and supporting the Lulu vision: attractive, stretchy, sweat-hostile pieces that the yoga practitioner also feels good in after class, as she grabs her soy latte.”….

Aldus
“Call me what you like” ???? Really!! Don’t mind if I do.
Do you know how big India is? Okay so people are upset, stage protests and block traffic in one city and out comes the snobbery and pretentious BS.
At least it is not about losing a hockey game!!

I’m very aware how large India is. I am not a trumpeter of the BPOE, nor am I a smug Canadian.

I’m drawing a parallel along these lines: people who are employed by a part of the energy infrastructure are being physically beaten! I thoroughly doubt that such implications would ever be taken to mortgage brokers and real estate agents who were happy (albeit some unknowing) participants in creating a disastrous scenario of which all people will be held responsible for come the CMHC/banking bailouts that loom after this housing crash.

I will accept brash, perhaps arrogant in tone, but I have seen an area I have spent many years of my life in plumped and fleeced despite the obvious signs. Which has led to my frustration and attitude.

The riots over hockey in Vancouver are shameful and part of a larger underlying societal problem of entitlement and lack of empathy towards our society. The streets should be full of protestors as our province is slowly undressed and sold to the highest lobbyist, however, you can clearly see where the priorities lay for many in the GVRD. It really IS different here.

[NoteToEd: Minor spelling change in Leader… Chalk it up to ArtisticLicense. Additionally, Nem’s proposed punishment for our home grown political and financial miscreants is to wear a different humiliating costume… daily… while serving the multitudes of those less fortunate assorted free comestibles from roving food trucks. Evenings and weekends not otherwise occupied dispensing nutritious snacks are to be devoted to scouring the ‘Augean Stables’… All to be WebCastLive… For purposes of sentencing, their punishment shall be deemed complete when they have accumulated sufficient hours of community service at the prevailing MinimumWage to offset their malfeasance… Let’s see now… CC’s PremierVisaTab @ 475K… 8$CDN/hr… 56HR week…. Hmmm… A little over 20 years.]

Agree with Paul S re being careful about scoffing at the potentially serious effects of climate change.
However, when we hear someone (1) guessing about the direction of Vancouver climate change AND (2) attempting to guess how that’ll be seen by others in “Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba” AND (3) assuming that such thinking is already instrumental in Vancouver RE price changes…. we’ll scoff at that line of argument.

Climate change is no joke. The Vancouver bubble pales in comparison to what is on the horizon. Scoffing people are pure damn fools so excuse me if I am irritated by your comment but the planet is knee deep in idiots who only see short term economic costs and have no understanding whatsoever of the real costs we are all paying.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a trained economist, has been influenced by a Zambian-born economist in crafting mortgage-amortization policies that may kill the Vancouver housing market and create significant hardship.”

That Zambian economist got one thing right. Africa needs investment, not charity. Do you have any idea how resentful the people there are to the hand-outs from the West? For every hundred billion in resources that are extracted annually there is a pittance of a few billion contributed back for humanitarian needs. One dollar is taken away for every 5 or 6 cents that is put back in. Is that fair? The whole process is utterly disgusting.

Here is a list of the worlds coffee producers. There is a handy map with pretty colours for you two highly educated respondants. Maybe you will notice there are more than a dozen African countries feeding into the coffee supply chain. For some of them this is their major export. That means that their economy is extremely dependent on coffee production. So it is not absolute volumes that count (this is not a competition about who produces the most) but rather coffee as a share of the economy in question. Some of those countries are struggling against anti competitive subsidies and supports provided by richer nations. It matters that almost all of these countries are seriously impoverished.

Farmer, did you actually read that table? African share of coffee production is small. What matters is the total production in KG, since you were talking about “us” (Western people) enjoying cheap coffee.

And sugar – the Top 10 producers are non-African countries and they produce 90+% of World’s sugar.

Of course, you do not care about facts, because they stand in the way of your little agenda. So you make up stuff and attack those that have proven you wrong.

PS: If you feel so guilty (which you abviously do), than stop preaching and do something real instead. Perhaps you could invest in some African country. Of course, that’s much harder than drinking latte and talking BS.

@bubbly – IMHO Farmer meant in general that “That Zambian economist got one thing right. Africa (ANY developing country – my comment) needs investment, not charity.” regardless where the cheap coffee, sugar, chocolate come from…
Anyway, I am more surprised that learn from this article that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a trained economist, did not look like it to me:(

Well, Airedales… it very much depends on where you study… faculty norms/rules… the ‘HouseStyle’, as it were. For example, no self-respecting Zimbabwean economist (particularly those vying for scarce tenure tracked posts at the fabled Shona Institute) would dare to address his graduate students [or the public] in anything less than full regalia… It’s a ConfidenceBuildingMeasure/JuJu potency thing…